


Game of Stranger Things

by Ladeeknight



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: 80!Westeros, 80's Music
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-06-27 05:47:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19784488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladeeknight/pseuds/Ladeeknight
Summary: So I had this crazy little idea that I couldn't shake: What if the Game of Thrones characters found themselves in a Stranger Things situation? This is that. Sheriff Sandor Clegane investigates the disappearance of Bran Stark. The boy was last seen at his D&D game with his friends Gendry Wheeler, Lommy St. Claire, and Hot Pie. Close association with Bran's mother Sansa Stark is going to stir up a past mostly dead. But as Game of Thrones has taught us "what is dead may never die" and also there is more to fear from the Other Side than grumpkins and snarks. And thirdly: everything is politics.The initiating circumstances are inspired by Stranger Things. But since these are GoT charries above and below somethings are going to be very different.The E rating is for the smut that will be happening in flash backs or with older teens i.e. Dany, Jon, and Daario. The kids will not be doing anything over a teen rating. But who knows what the adults will get up to, so in a abundance of caution I chose E. Also some of the gore may earn an E.





	1. Party Like its 1983

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a handy little who's who of Wintertown.  
> Sheriff Jim Hopper=Sheriff Sandor Clegane  
> Joyce Byers=Sansa Stark  
> Jonathan=Jon Stark (Sansa's Brother who has a Rickon(ish) age gap with Sansa  
> Will=Bran  
> Mike Wheeler=Gendry Wheeler  
> Nancy=Dany  
> Karen=Mageary   
> Ted=Bronn  
> Dustin=Hot Pie  
> Lucas=Lommy  
> Eleven=?  
> Papa (Brenner)= Petyr Baelish   
> more later

Nov 6 1983

Ambrose Frey was not the smartest man on his research team, or the most well-liked. That was probably why he was voluntold to go down and reset the rift alarm.

 _The damned thing is always malfunctioning,_ he tried to comfort himself as he headed down the long flickering hall. It wasn't particularly cold in here, but gooseflesh puckered his skin all along the front side of his body as if his hair were straining to get away from something.

The shrill beep of the key panel almost blotted out the rattling noise that drew his eye to a thing that did not belong in a lab. _Well not this sort of lab anyway. They skipped animal testing at Frey Biotics and went straight to kids, _he chuckled to himself as he knelt in front of the little blue-eyed bunny that was so cutely wiggling his nose toward Ambros. "Here bunny, bunny," he said, thinking of the delight in his little Amy's eyes when he brought this fuzzy little guy home.  
The bunny hopped over to him making that rattling noise again. "That's strange, " Ambros said. As proof of stranger things, the bunny's face split at it's quivering nose into five more or less equal portions that were studded inside with icicle-like spikes. That was the last thing Ambros saw.__

__###_ _

__Deep blue eyes the color of a stormy sea peered over a DM’s screen. They shifted to pin each party member in turn. Bran the Wise is nervous but excited. He could tell that something big was coming, but it was the Cleric’s job to mitigate damage and protect the party. Bran the boy built his character well, as had his friends. They were ready for whatever Gendry threw at them, though it seemed Bran was alone in this assessment._ _

__"We're doomed if is the Demogorgon, " bemoaned Hot Pie through his lisp._ _

__Gendry mastered his own smile of triumph silently, but not before Bran saw it._ _

__"Shhhhhhhhhh don't give him ideas, " Lommy scolded. The table bumped as the dark-skinned boy's ill-aimed kick hit a wooden leg instead of a fleshy one._ _

__“An army of troglodytes charge into the chamber,” their adventuresmith said too casually as he scattered some mini’s on the hashed board expertly so that each base fit perfectly within it’s square._ _

__“Troglodytes,” Hot Pie confirmed his voice now filled with Bardic confidence. A few more titters of relief escaped several throats as Lommy rubbed his hands together in anticipation of the battle to come._ _

__Once silence had fallen, Gendry cocked his mop of dark, curly hair to one side. “Did you hear that?” He cocked his head to the other side and squinted one eye while the other corner of his mouth twisted up. “That booming sound was definitely not made by troglodytes. It is a…” he slammed the mini down on the table so that all the others jumped. Gendry had just gone through a rather dramatic growth spurt and was still learning his own strength “Demogorgon!” The table erupted in cries of despair. “Bran, what’s your action?”_ _

__“I don’t know,” Bran dithered. Much advice came his way. “Fireball!” “Protection Spell!” He knew what he wanted to do, but the odds were not with him. Caution had been drilled into him in recent years, it was hard for him to make a move in such circumstances._ _

__“The Demogorgon tires of your petty human bickering,” Gendry intoned in his “scary” voice, deep and raspy. “He stalks forward, intent on your demise. What do you do?”_ _

__Bran locked eyes with Gendry. The faintest flicker of an encouraging grin skimmed Gendry's lips. Bran shook his dice for luck and cast them across the table, crowing, “Fire Ball!” The dice raced across the table, the colorful cubic six-siders stop indicating a decent amount of damage, but the 20 shot right off the edge. Everyone leaped from their chairs, hoping loudly for a 13 or better._ _

__It was into this hotbed of mayhem that Mrs. Margeary Wheeler appeared at the top of the stairs brown curls and stylish figure silhouetted in the kitchen light pouring down the unfinished basement stairs. “What in the Seven are you boys doing down here?” she demanded sweetly._ _

__“Mom, we’re in the middle of a campaign,” Gendry informed her, with less politeness than was his habit when speaking to his mother._ _

__“I think you mean the end,” Mrs. Wheeler corrected calmly with an edge to her cordial tone. Bran had long learned the vibe in each of his friends’ homes. Mrs. Wheeler was a queen here. She never raised her voice or failed to smile, but she could and did exact meaningful punishments on her children when they didn’t behave to her specifications, which were not precisely strict, but centered heavily around manners and social presentation. Gendry was not far from being able to look his mother in the eye, but his dad was a big and rough man named Bronn Wheeler, who did whatever Mrs. Wheeler told him to. Gendry made a shooshing gesture by patting the air behind him as he tromped up the stairs to plead their case to his mom while the search for Bran's die continued._ _

__Thinking of Mr. Wheeler led Bran's thoughts to swirl around his own father as he crawled face first along carpet peering under the couch for the errant die. Joff (Bran couldn’t even bring himself to think of him as dad) didn’t like him much. The tall blond man was always trying to change Bran, specifically to make him less nerdy. Joff would have preferred him to be out tossing the football with his friends rather than playing at Swords and Sorcery. Bran sometimes wondered if Joff would have stayed his mother if he’d been more of the son that Joff wanted. Bran couldn’t quite bring himself to wish that he could be different even if meant that Joff had never left. Further introspection was derailed by a 20-sider winking a seven at him from just behind the blocky leg of Gendry's wagon wheel couch. “I found it,” Bran announced sadly to bring down some of the chaos in the room._ _

__“What was it?” Hot Pie demanded._ _

__“Not enough,” Bran exhaled forlornly._ _

__“It doesn’t count if Gendry’s not here,” Lommy assured him. Just then Gendry reappeared at the top of the stairs shaking his head sullenly as he clomped down to start clearing away the game. “Roll again next week,” Lommy whispered folding Bran’s fingers around his die._ _

__The boys packed up in a funk and Gendry walked them out to where their bikes were parked. Hot Pie and Lommy took off immediately, but Bran hung back. “I rolled a seven. The Demogorgon got me,” he said to Gendry before mounting his bike and riding into the darkness._ _

__As Bran road along he became aware of a burning sensation low on his leg. He looked down as he passed beneath one of the last street lights on his ride to see a thin red trickle beneath a tear in his pants. His mom would not be happy. She worried so much about his clothes, thinking they were the main reason he was bullied so much at school. Bran knew that she felt guilty for not having the money to buy him nice things. He’d tried to tell her on several occasions that he was just weird and that kids would tease him no matter what, but she was still sad._ _

__As Bran rode further from the lights of town, the houses got shabbier and further from the main road. His family had not always been poor. Bran dimly remembered Sevenmases far away in a big bright house with roaring fires by a sparkling Sea. There were so many presents that the shiny papered boxes eclipsed the weir wood branch though it was lighted and laden with expensive glass baubles from across the Narrow Sea. And there was always more food and sweets than any of them could eat brought and arranged by tiptoeing servants. That was with Joff’s family._ _

__If he was being honest with himself, Bran preferred the dingy, ramshackle house way out by the Wolfswood. He could be himself there, with just his mother and uncle for company. Bran turned off the King’s Road onto a narrow two-lane road that his party had nicknamed the Demon Road after an old road that was said to have connected Old Volantis, before the Doom, to Mereen. That old road was said to have been plagued by pirates and worse, and the boys liked to pretend the same of this stretch of concrete, riding their bikes as fast as the low light of the encroaching trees allowed. It was a dark tonight, but Bran had made this journey hundreds of times. It was predominantly lined with pines, but here and there the pale trunk of a weir wood could be glimpsed further back in the Wolf Wood. And there was even one with a face carved in it near the turn-off for home. Bran always waved at the face even though his friends laughed at the old superstition._ _

__As Bran approached the familiar spot, all he heard were shoosing pines without the comforting rustling of the red leaves. He was so intent on looking for the pale trunk with its weeping face that he almost ran into crimson branches that sprayed darkly onto the pavement. Bran skidded to a halt, an inexplicable sense of loss clutching at his chest._ _

__Gripped by a burning need to know what had happened to the tree, he walked his bike alongside the trunk toward the place where wood met earth. Bran’s mind swirled with possibilities. _Was it a freak lightning bolt? Had a car crashed into it? Maybe someone needs help. Could someone have cut it down deliberately?_ No amount of questioning could have prepared him for what he found at the base of the trunk._ _

__Before Bran was able to fully process what he’d seen, he was knocked off his feet and sent hurtling into the branches that lay splayed on the forest floor in a snapped and twisted tangle. Bran’s world narrowed to white limbs and still red leaves as his chest heaved with pained pants. He lay winded and dazed for a moment, until the pain in his leg demanded his attention. What had been a small cut on his ankle from the grip of his bike pedal was now a freely bleeding gash. _Whatever hit me, must have done something else to me too,_ Bran thought frantically. _ _

__There was a rattling sound not entirely different from the rustling leaves of an upright weir wood tree. The leaves all around Bran were limp and still though. "rrrrttttt" His head whipped around to follow the noise. To his immediate left the leaves were parting to reveal something that Bran truly did not want to see. He rolled and as he did a limb sprang up to slap wetly at something. Bran harnessed the momentum of his roll into a stumbling run. He did not look back they way they did in horror movies. Bran wanted to live way more than he wanted to see what was chasing him. He did hear some familiar rustling as if something was being held in a cage lined in weirwood leaves. Just as he crossed onto his own sparse lawn, Bran made out a splintering scream that followed him into his house as he slid the lock chain across its little track._ _

__He felt the empty house around him huddle way from what was outside. It was late, but both Jon and his mom must be at work. Bran all but slapped the cheerful yellow headset off the wall and began frantically dialing the number to his mom's work. Over the beeps of the number pad, a low, ominous grating intruded. Will looked up to see the chain sliding, apparently unaided, across its little metal channel._ _

__Bran gaped for a moment then dropped the phone to bounce lamely against the wall and bolted for the back door. He played in a world were magic was a thing and so spent no time trying to deny what his eyes were showing him. The last thing he heard before slamming yet another door was his mother's voice intoning the greeting for Torrhen’s Square pharmacy. Bran dashed tears of desperation and longing from his eyes as he sprinted for the shed as fast as his spindly, though bully trained legs could take him._ _

__Once he reached the rickety outbuilding, he wasted no time trying to bar the door but instead yanked the string on the bare bulb illuminating the dusty, cobwebbed interior. Will went straight for a box of shells and the gun. With shaking hands, he jammed bullets into the chamber, all the while listening for the deadly rattle._ _

__Will took a deep, steadying breath, as Jon had taught him, and aimed at the door. Nothing happened. There was no sound, but Will felt something behind him and so turned. The light intensified to incandescence; then everything went dark._ _


	2. Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein we peek into Sandor's dreams of the past, and also catch a glimpse of Sansa's current mindset before discovering her precious baby is missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to truly know someone, watch them in the morning before reality has completely taken hold over dream space. We get to know the SanSan of this story. I hope you'll like how I blended and altered the characters to fit into the 80's.

Party like it's 1970  
_Paper lanterns of all colors swung from the heart tree in the school's courtyard. Prom was out here this year because most of the money for the dance went to cover a lark gone horribly wrong. Ironically the least part of the prank somewhat resembled the streamers it took the guys several hours to put up under the careful direction of the girls._ It's still pretty, _he supposed, if Sandor gave fuck about shit like that._

_He was itchy and hot in the ruffled tux Joff forced him to wear. His quarterback had also forbidden him from combing his hair over the scars on his face on pain of receiving no passes when the scouts came to town next week. Consequently, Sandor’s habitual glare was amplified and on unhindered display._

_The guidance counselor, Petyr Baelish, was about to make some bullshit toast, and everyone stood around like assholes with charged glasses of lame punch when there was a squeal to his right. Sansa Stark, Joff’s date, peeled out of the crowd of students beaming her brilliant, giddy smile all over the place like a beacon in a storm as she flew to her father's side where he stood at one of the four entrances to the courtyard._

_Ned Stark was in a dress uniform, and the plain-faced bearded man looked as uncomfortable as Sandor felt. Sansa had been bitching earlier in the limo about how her father was supposed to chaperone alongside her mother tonight when the mayor called him away to a formal dinner with some important constituents. And sure enough, that bloody bugger stumbled in on the Sheriff’s heels._

_Sandor could feel Joff next to him stiffen like a board. The relationship between Robert Baratheon and his eldest son was strained at best. Sandor understood perfectly what it was like to have a farther that neglected you. Sometimes that understanding was the only thing that kept him from punching the ever-living shit out his QB and "friend."_

_Everyone's eye was now on an older, more elegant version of Sansa floating across the dance floor to fill her husband's punch glass. She was also beaming, and Sandor wondered how Ned Stark got to be such a lucky son of a bitch._

_As Sandor was scrutinizing Sheriff Stark for any secrets to success the man might have printed in his cool gray eyes, a movement over Ned's shoulder caught a caught the his eye. The arrival of the town’s football heroes from another generation had eclipsed the speech that Baelish called for moments ago. By the annoyed twitch of short man's narrow shoulders and the hateful glint in Little Fucker's eye, he was not best pleased about it. Otherwise, little man's face displayed a placid expression. Sandor wondered if the smarmy shit's eyes had ever been another color before whatever happened between him and Stark transpired, and the jealousy began to eat Baelish alive._

_Sandor allowed his own gaze to flit back to Sansa for one brief glorious moment and contemplated the possibility of his gray eyes turning as green the guidance councilor's._ Poor girl deserved better than a mewling cunt like Joff or an ugly hound like me. She could take her pick of any man in town, but she'd be better off picking someone outside Wintertown. _She could be great, but here she'd just be the reincarnation of her mother as he would probably end up dog catcher like his father unless some scout picked him up for a football scholarship. He was good, but so were a lot of guys. And so, he trained as if his life depended on it. And he stood by and watched as Joff treated Sansa like shit, though he wanted to murder the little bastard. Only the golden boy’s arm could get Sandor out of this fucking town. But one day he might decide that he'd rather leave Wintertown on a prison bus than a scholarship._

_Petyr caught him staring and flicked a sneer at Sandor before the slight man raised his punch glass and began droning on about how chaos was a ladder that the lucky few could use to climb to great heights…_

###

The droning from the dream or flashback or whatever the fuck it was blended with the unnecessary droning from the weather girl on the living room TV as Sandor made his painful ascent towards consciousness. His frame would never fit on any couch that would fit in this shitty little house so his legs hung off at an odd angle. Not for the first time did he regret his hard and fast rule of keeping his pills in the bathroom cabinet and his gun by the door. Sandor hauled himself to his feet to shamble down the hall shedding yesterday's clothing in his wake. He was down to just jeans as he stopped at the fridge for his morning shower beer. A glance at the clock on the microwave told him Olenna would be displeased when he finally drug his ass into the station. 

One his way to the bathroom, he cracked the beer open one-handed as he turned loose his belt buckle with the other letting the weight of the metal and leather peel the denim off him as he stepped painfully out of his pants. Sandor Clegane stood stark naked in the bathroom mirror as he twisted off the cap on the little orange bottle and shook out a hand full of relief. He could feel a storm front moving in as flashes of pain streaked through his knee. This was definitely a three-pill day. He slapped his hand to his open mouth, concentrating on the flex and ripple of muscle, doing everything he could to avoid looking at the pink puckered vertical lines burned into his face. This was no easy feat as Sandor's scars ran from his stubbled chin, through his lips, up his cheeks, across his left eyebrow and up into his hairline in straight, angry lines that twisted his features into a grotesque visage. _Be glad you have a left eye_ he reminded himself for the umteenth jillion time as he ground the pills between his teeth, the bulge of his jaw muscle distorting the symmetry of one of the lines on his face. He took a swig of the beer and swished the bitter solution around his mouth before swallowing.

Sandor reached into the shower, slapped on the hot water, and took a long, loud piss while the water warmed up. He then climbed into the yellowed tub shower, all while nursing his breakfast from an aluminum can. The scalding spray hit him mid-chest, and the thick pelt of his chest hair took most of the sting from heat. No shower he'd been in recently was tall enough to spray down on him so he'd have to crouch to get his hair wet. His knee was not quite up to that, yet so Sandor stood for a moment letting the water and the dream run over him.

Usually, he only remembered his dreams if he woke up screaming, but the rare joy of seeing Sansa young and relatively carefree was...not shitty. Considering how that evening had ended, maybe his brain had just been warming up to the nightmare when the anchorwoman had delivered him from his usual fate. With a determined yank Sandor pulled his thoughts from the past and focused on the dream. Soon enough the pain killers had kicked in and he was able to start his day.

#

The smell of eggs and bacon drew Sansa away from the mirror rubbing her lips together to spread the coral lipstick evenly. Despite being dead tired when she arrived home from the late shift last night, she’d slept poorly. Bran was such a light sleeper that she was conscious of every toss and turn least she wake her little man. He needed his sleep to grow strong. 

Consequently, Sansa woke up looking hag-ridden. Once upon a time that would have bothered her a great deal. She was no longer that petty girl. Now she was a woman whose boss expected her to maintain a certain level of “professionalism.” That abstract apparently translated into a coat of foundation, lipstick, and mascara at the very least. Lothor Frey “didn’t hire the prettiest pharmacist in three states to have her show up to work looking tired.” Sansa had suggested that not scheduling her back to back open and closing shifts would go a long way to curing that condition. His reply had been, “Someone has to cover Black Walder’s shift on bowling night." Sansa had then proposed they do a straight trade with Black Walder taking her morning shift. Lothor had just laughed and said something about loosing customers to a hangover. 

Sansa knew intellectually that she was a liberated woman, her divorce paperwork was proof of that at least, but she often felt, especially when she looked at her paycheck. It was 2/3’s of what Black Walder made and he hadn’t actually gone to pharmacy school. The large disagreeable man just used the "big book of pills" in the back room to fill the prescriptions written by Doc Pycell with no thought of drug interactions or tendencies toward addiction. Really the man was a lawsuit waiting to happen, but since he was also a favorite of Old Walder Frey, Black Walder did basically whatever he wanted while pulling a generous paycheck for it.

Sansa made a mental effort to leave these woes in the bathroom to greet her boys with the positivity they deserved. She’d raised her brother Jon from a very young age alongside her own son to be the sort of man who cooked breakfast to help the family start the day with hot food in their bellies. The way she raised her boys was what Sansa had control over, not anyone else’s behavior, she reminded herself as she entered the kitchen with what she hoped was a bright smile pinned to her face.

Her smile fell when she found Jon alone. “Is Bran up?” Sansa asked around the cracked edges of her good intentions.

“I made tons of noise,” Jon explained with a shrug as he turned from the stove her frilly pink apron tied over his school clothes. He avoided making eye contact with her by scraping eggs out of the pan onto the three plates set out on the dingy little kitchen table. “If he slept through that, then he needs to.”

 _Or he’s sick again,_ Sansa thought as headed down the hall toward Bran’s room biting her tongue against berating Jon. He did what he thought was best by letting Bran sleep.

Sansa's heart came up into her throat when she found her son’s room empty. Bran was not the neatest child and she didn’t have time to make his bed for him every morning, so the blankets were piled haphazardly. Sansa could not tell if it had been slept in or not. 

She rushed back up the hallway. “He’s not back there. Could he have left early for school? What time did he get home yesterday?”

There was a frustrating beat of silence as Jon swallowed the eggs he’d shoveled into his mouth as she’d entered the kitchen, but she supposed she preferred that to seeing the eggs as he spoke. She’d done a good job drilling manners into him, just as mother would have wanted. “I didn’t get home ‘til late. I assumed he was already asleep.”

“What?!” Sansa said incredulously. “You are not supposed to take shifts when I’m working!”

“The other cook called in. Bran was over at the Wheelers all day anyway." Color rose in Jon's cheeks as he pronounced the last name of one Bran's best friends. Normally Sansa would have pursued this new turn of events doggedly, but at this moment she had no thoughts other than Bran and his whereabouts. "I knew he’d be there late. We need the money, Sis,” he reminded her needlessly.

Frustrated tears sprang into Sansa’s eyes. She swiped at them angrily thinking of her two thirds pay, as she moved toward the sunshine yellow phone mounted to the wall. Sansa grasped and pulled her hand back from the cool smooth plastic as if she'd been burned as she received a jolt of panic and a vivid flashback to a hang-up call she’d received the night before. There had been strange frozen clicks, a slamming door, then a high electric buzz before Sansa hung up assuming it was a prank. Now she was gripped by the certainty it had been Bran. 

Sansa replaced the headset and took several deep attempted to dampen her panic. Making this phone call would be stressful in the best of circumstances. This was certainly not that. She felt Jon’s reassurance tinged by a frisson of guilt as he continued to eat. Ghost padded out of the room he shared with Jon to lean heavily against her leg and lick her hand. With one last steadying breath, Sansa swept the headset off the hook and dialed a once familiar number.

“Wheeler residence,” purred a petal smooth voice. _She is perfect even this early in the morning_.

“Hi, Marge. It’s Sansa.”

“Oh, hi Sansa!” came through bright and clear. Then more muffled, “Can you two quit bickering for one second.” Then clear once again. “Sorry, Sans. What can I do for you? Wanna have lunch and get our nails done?”

 _If only that was my life._ “No, I’m sorry. I can’t this week. Was that Bran’s voice I heard in the back ground?”

“No just my little roses jabbing at each other. I sent Bran home last night. Is everything all right?”

“Yes, I’m sure he just left for school early. Thanks, Marge. Have a nice day,” Sansa managed to shove the pleasantries out of her mouth before she slapped the phone back onto the receiver. She clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a sob, but the strangled sound that escaped brought Jon close up behind her.

“Sissa, don’t cry.” The use of this old name for her reminded Sansa that she’d been through ugly times before, a sentiment that shoved steel into her spine. After a pile-up tragedies left them orphans, a confused little Jon would often call her Mama. Sansa sensed it was out of a need to be like the other kids as much as that she looked so much like their mother, but it would set Joff off. They’d come up with "Sissa" as a compromise between sister, which felt too formal to both of them, and mama. “I’ll go to his school and look for him.”

Sansa pulled herself away from Jon, unable to accept comfort from him. “Eat first, please. I think we are going to need our strength before this is over.” Sansa picked up the phone and dialed another number that also unfortunately ingrained in her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you all think of the way the flashback is formatted? Is it clear what is happening. Taking a page (or more) from GoT a lot of what is going on this the "present" of this story is linked to the past so there will lots of flash backs. Also feed back on difference in Sandor's scars is appreciated. Can you guess what happened based on my description?


	3. Missing Persons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa files a missing persons report for her son. We flash back to SanSan's meet ugly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some really bad language in this chapter. For those familiar with me and my liberal swearing both in the story and comments section, you maybe laughing. Though I am pretty liberal with my four letter swear words there are some words that I do not use in real life and so do not often use in my writing because It's just not something I think so I don't think to write it. These gems are used in canon though and so I copied them here, because it felt right it. If you do not care to encounter the 3 letter eff word for a gay person or its que companion in a derogatory context mind the asterisks.

By the time he reached the station, Sandor was walking upright, with an only barely perceptible limp, and looking forward to his morning donut. The sugar would help him shift from beer in the shower to whiskey in his coffee so that he could coast through another day.

The familiar sight of Thoros and Beric playing cards grounded Sandor enough that when Old Nan started waving Pepto pink message notes in his face, he hardly even snapped at her. “Stealing the Children of the Forest statues out of Jon Umber’s yard again? I’ll get right on that after lunch,” he assured her before wedging a donut in his mouth so that he could both balance his coffee and rearrange Beric hand. _It’s like the man doesn’t care if he wins or losses._ “Mornings are for coffee and contemplation,” he growled around his donut.

“Yes well on a more pressing note,” the old woman’s voice was at once penetrating and soothing, and Sandor could see how she’d made an excellent nursemaid for so many years, “Sansa Stark can't find her son this morning.” Sandor had to exert all the control he had not to jerk his head around to glare at the woman who ran his office as she’d seemingly picked the thought right out of his brain. “Sansa is very upset,” she continued naming the woman she had once been a nanny to. “She -“ 

Sandor had to cut her off. He was coming dangerously close to caring. He jerked the donut out of his mouth in case he hadn't made him self heard around it earlier. “Nan we've discussed this. Mornings are for coffee and contemplation,” he repeated, turning into his office as he shoved the donut back into his mouth. The golden ring dropped from his mouth at the sight of Sansa Stark sitting on his desk. The sugary goodness was only saved by his early morning reflexes that were still not that great as he bounced the donut from hand to hand a couple of times before getting a firm grip on it and himself. 

Sansa was an absolute mess. To be fair, she'd been a bit of a mess since senior prom. And then that whole thing with the baby and her parents. Sandor had suddenly had ten thousand things on his own plate, including the war he went off to fight in. There had been no room in his head for Sansa Stark. Or at least that is what he told himself as he sidled around his desk.

“Help yourself,” he grunted sarcastically as she had not only already poured a slug of secret stash whiskey into his #1 Sheriff mug, but also found his emergency pack of smokes and was shakily pressing a lit one between garishly painted lips.

“Thank you,” she chirped. “I would not have imposed without asking if you’d bothered to show up to your own office on time. Also, the combination to your safe is zero’s then your high school jersey number. Why not just leave everything out on your desk?” Everybody knows you’re a worthless alcoholic; Sandor heard her unspoken words, as he slotted the triplicate missing persons report in the typewriter and began hitting the keys with more force than necessary.

“His legal name is Brandon Stark,” she corrected him just as is finger headed for the b key. Her lavender perfume swirled around him with her cigarette smoke as he looked up to see her leaned way over his deck, watching him peck out the letters. 

“Bet Joff fucking loves that,” he grated through a laugh as he entered the information she'd just imparted.

“It was a concession, so certain things do not come to light,” she informed him succinctly through lips gone stiff and white with stress beneath her horrid orange lipstick. Why did women hide the natural color of their lips? Was it so that their nipple color would come as some sort of shock? 

“Are you sure you want me to make this official?” He asked worried that Joff could use this in future custody battles.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I’ve been waiting over an hour to do just that.” Her usually crisp consonants were starting to sound a little soggy. “Why do you ask?” Her tone was definitely getting more defensive.

"Boy his age is age is probably just playing hooky.” 

"Not my Bran," she shot back sounding like every mother. 

"My Mam thought I was on the debate team when really I was playing grab-ass with Brienne Tarth." It was technically accurate, though really, he'd been helping Brienne train for the football team in exchange for her pretending to go out with him so Bronn Wheeler would lay off him about his crush on the head cheerleader who was, of course, dating the quarterback. Sansa had been that head cheerleader. The sadistic blond fuck had knocked Sansa up and then run around on her to the point where she kicked him out, or so the story went around town. With a father like Joff, the boy could be out in the woods cutting open cats for all Sandor knew.

"He's not like you Clegane. " Sansa spit the words at him, and he expected the stubble on his face to stiffen with frost from the chill of her words. _Is that resentment in her voice?_ Sandor’s mouth twitched with the knowledge that the ice princess had just entered the building, though he also remembered when she used to burn hot. "He's not like me.” She continued taking a deep drag off the cigarette. “He’s not like anyone, really." She blew the smoke up, though he clearly would not care if she puffed it right in his face. A secret smile played on her lips and melted her bright blue eyes that were directed toward the ceiling as if contemplating something heavenly. Suddenly his shirt felt too small, and he rubbed at his chest. Before Sandor could cover his emotional reaction by reaching for his bottle of Tums her face flashed feral. "The kids at school are mean. They make fun of him and call him names." She turned naked, wounded eyes on him, and the subtext was clear: the way they used to do to you until you got big enough to start doing serious damage.

Sandor could not meet her eyes. He couldn't have sympathy for the kid or he’d have to have some for himself. He didn't judge Sansa for having divorced Joff like everyone else in this damned town. Her life would certainly be easier if she could have ignored the little shit's infidelities and just enjoyed all the perks of vast wealth. Sandor was proud of her for running Joff out of her life. He couldn’t show that if he wanted to keep his job as chief of police, but he was good at keeping his feelings to himself.

Sansa was going on about the kid’s clothes, and he seized on that to cover his inattentiveness. "His clothes. What's wrong with his clothes?"

"I don’t know. Does it matter?"

"Maybe." 

***"Look he's just sensitive. Joff used to say he was queer, even called him a…" her mouth crimped in extreme distaste, but a rolling motion with his hand finally drug the word from her, "fag," but in an outraged whisper. ***

"Is he?" Sandor asked urgently. It was something that Gregor used to taunt him with as well before...Sandor slammed down the gates of his mind on that line of thought. He needed a clear head if he was going to track down Sansa's kid, and this whole shitery just took a dark turn toward public men's rooms and child sex trafficking. The last thing he needed was to toss a flicked Bick into the dumpster fire that was his twisted psyche. 

"He's missing is what he is," she seethed through clenched teeth her flaming lips were hiked up in disgust, and he saw that old fire in her ignite. He was frightened by it as he hadn't been in a long time. 

It sparked something in him, though. "When was the last time you heard from Joff?" He picked up a pen and located a pad on his cluttered desk.

"It’s been over a year, " she replied primly. "This has nothing to do with Joff."

"Ninety-nine out of a hundred missing kids are with a relative."

"This isn't that, " she repeated flatly. "This is the one time it's different. I feel it." And in spite of himself, Sandor could feel it too. He mostly acted out of instinct, though he was good at finding logical excuses to maintain his facade of logic before everything else. "If it will make you feel better, I will contact Joff and ask him. He won't talk to you after…"

"After I beat the ever-loving shit out of him, " Sandor finished with more satisfaction than one should probably have about a beating that was nearly a decade and a half old. But it was still one of Sandor's favorite memories and the last thing he truly recalled from the night that had such far-reaching consequences, not just for himself, but for Sansa and the whole damn town.

"Can you just set aside all your ego bullshit and find my son?"

Hearing the profanity on her lips sent a thrill down his spine, but Sandor had to admit it was a valid request, so he finished out the report with just the facts.

#

A chill wind ruffled Sansa's hair as she headed to her still kicking Pinto. Even so, she felt inexplicably better leaving the station than she had going in. Just getting a hug from Old Nan made her feel like a child with solvable problems, again. The old dear had seemed like an incarnation of the Crone herself as she reminded Sansa of one of her father's favorite sayings, a line from one of the old Epics: When the snow flies/the lone wolf dies, /but the pack survives. Sansa had protested to her old nanny that a pack needs at least three members and without Bran…"Sweet summer child, " the old woman said without the malice those words usually held, "just go in and sit down. The Sheriff will be along before too long." Sansa had obeyed thinking it remarkable that Old Nan should say Sheriff in exactly the same way to describe both her father and Sandor Clegane.

As she drove away from the station, Sansa let her mind wander down memory lane. Images of Sandor as she'd first known him floated unbidden from the vaults of her mind. He'd been a skinny, bloody mess that day in the Summer before Sophomore year when he'd tripped out of a thicket of weir woods behind her. His way-too-big-for-his-body hands clamped around the worn shoulders of her dad’s old worn plaid shirt, so his momentum did not knock her flat. The grip was so firm and sure that for a fleeting moment, Sansa thought she was going to find her father standing behind her as she turned. The reality of a boy with a face half-carved like a weir wood tree dripping blood instead of sap, popping out of the white trunks in her godswood was so shocking that she couldn't help but draw back in fear. "That's right, run!" He snarled as he gave her an ungentle push.

Sansa instinctively obeyed, the sticks and twigs whipping at pale legs laid bare by cut-offs she would not be caught dead wearing in town but were fine for back woods meandering. She could hear something big behind them blundering through the undergrowth. "What are we running from? " she panted for the boy was not chasing her as evidenced by the first few strides he took which, would have easily let him overtake her if she had been the prey.

"Brother, " he rasped.

That word drew Sansa out of her panic, and she veered North down a familiar path. "This way."

The boy followed her. Curses and bellowed threats of the vilest sort hounded them up the twisting game trail. Soon Sansa could hear faint rustling in front of her. "Wolf and friendly incoming. Monster on heels, maybe twenty feet back, " Sansa called as the trail opened into a clearing. She hoped the radio language that her brothers almost exclusively communicated in, both in person and over their hand helds, would keep her and the weir boy from getting shot.

There were barrels pointed at her when she burst into the clearing where her brother mentioned they were going to be shooting in this morning over breakfast. Robb's vivid blue eyes were clearly visible over the scope of his rifle as her words had signaled him to lower his gun. Theon's face was still obscured as he had not dropped his rifle and it was trained behind and to the right of Sansa. "We need cover, " she said, moving so that she stood between Sandor and Theon's gun.

"C'mon then, " Robb barked. And then to Theon. "Give cover and fall back." They moved in eerie tandem. Her father was a veteran and had taken training his sons, true born and adopted, very seriously, and it showed.

Sansa pulled Sandor along by the hand to the back of the clearing, while Robb and Theon walked backward, shielding them from trail head. Her brother's gun was trained on the obvious opening of the path, while Theon, who was the better shot, continuously scanned the wall of trees for a surprise attack.

The attack was not a surprise. The giant brute of a near-man blundered out of the trees along the path of least resistance, ranting and raving about stolen pornography. He halted at the site of the guns trained on him, but his face cracked into a horrific grin as if welcoming the challenge of two armed men. "You won't shoot, " he dared. 

"Pierce his ear if he takes another step, Theon." Robb said calmly.

“All I want is my brother. Send him over, and we'll go.”

“We heard your plans for him. He’s safer with us,” Robb said, bracing his gun on his shoulder.

“Yeah, how is that any of your gods damned business?”

“I'm the sheriff's son, and this is our land. Do you claim sanctuary?" Robb directed the question over his shoulder toward the weir boy standing beside her though slightly forward as if to protect her should his brother be crazy enough to rush the guns.

"Aye." The boy said, and Sansa could hear the Westerlands in his voice now.

"I don't recognize your Pegan bullshit, " his brother said, shifting from side to side making it harder for Theon to keep a bead on him.

"Do you recognize our superior force?"

"I'm gonna come over there, jerk the gun out of your hand, and fire it right up your ass, pretty boy. Teach you a little something about superior force."

“C'mon then,” Robb invited in a menacing growl.

The Mountain of a boy/man lowered his head and charged. Theon's first bullet passed right through where his target's ear had been. His second took the guy in his meaty right arm which caused the hurtling mass of flesh to flinch, but not really slow down. He and Robb collided with a crackling whump, and Robb went over backward. 

The instant their brothers connected the bloody boy shot forward and scooping Robb’s gun up where hit had fallen, began swinging vicious blows at his brother’s lower back. His sibling roared at that and sat up though he still pinned a wildly squirming Robb by sitting on his chest. Theon also entered the fray jabbing the butt of his rifle into the bleeding wound that he’d created. The outnumbered man roared and punched Robb repeatedly in the face and then turned his attention to his brother aiming a vicious swat at the kid’s bleeding head, just as another rifle report made Sansa nearly jump out of her skin. The boy dropped to the ground immediately and in doing so, eluded his brother’s blow.

Sansa was so absorbed in the fight in front of her that she had not noticed when her father entered the clearing from the East, with a friend towering just to his left. “What in the Stranger’s bloody asshole is going on here?” Mayor Robert Baratheon bellowed. As usual when in the woods his wiry salt and pepper hair and beard were atangle with sticks and leaves, and he looked like a part of the wild had scrapped off a tree and fell into a pile of rags, looted a corpse for its weapons, and took up the wild hunt. His smoking barrel pointed one-handed at the sky.

Her father’s however was trained on his son’s assailant. “Theon,” he growled, “get the boy out of the way. You,” her father’s voice went glacial “get off my son or feed the wolves.” As if to underscore the threat, howls echoed off the sky.

Theon and the boy moved away quickly as the interloper growled back. He rocked to his feet with terrifying quickness and made as if to kick Robb. A bullet parted his dark, unkempt hair and grazed his scalp. Ned cocked his rifle and chambered another round as Mayor Baratheon took aim. “I’m not near as good as he is so if I fire at you, I will shoot to kill. Probably hit you in the gut though. That’s a long way to die.”

It was almost painful to for Sansa to watch the slow procession of logic grind through the rage, the thick skull into whatever passed for this brute’s brain. He stepped back from Robb and aimed his finger like a pistol at the boy. “You gotta come back sometime, pup.” He jerked his hand and made puschhhh sound that was threatening though it sounded nothing like gunfire. Then he turned and lumbered from the clearing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you all think? I think there will be a hefty flash back during most chapters. How do you all feel about that? Is the back story interesting to you?


	4. Entrances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another flash back to Prom. This one is steamier than the last, but probably not the smuttiest thing that happens at that prom. A nameless girl makes her entrance.

_Party like it’s 1970_  
_“Ned, what are you doing here? I thought you couldn’t make it?” Cat’s bright blue eyes were beaming mischief at him over the rim of her punch cup like they had not for 15 years as they swayed to strains of a sad old song about a good queen and her silver dragon. It was one of Ned's favorite as there were several verses about her journey North, which appealed to him on the deepest of level. Consequently he and Cat had danced to this song dozens of time. This time was very different though. Cat's normal correct dance posture from her ballroom competition days was missing. She was a pliant liquid heat in his arms flowing up against him in her silky dress, one hand curled around her cup and the other curled in the hair at the nape of his neck. The circles she was making in his scalp with her nails were waking his wolf._  
_“The meeting went South as soon as Robert and I heard the Freys want to open some sort of laboratory Southwest of Wintertown, so we left early. I couldn’t think of a single place I’d rather be than with my two girls.” Ned drained his own cup of punch before crumpling the plastic and banking it off the side of the nearest trash can to cover his half-truth. He didn't lie often, and almost never to Cat, but he wanted to fan the fire of the heat he saw smoldering in her eyes. Still, he superstitiously craned his neck to peer over his lady’s auburn up-do to try to spot their daughter’s brighter loose curls, as if having them both in his sight-line could protect them from telling a lie before a heat tree. Ned caught a flash of Sansa's blazing locks around a white tuxedo jacket just before Cat tiptoed into his view, snagging his misty gaze purposefully with her own, searing one. Her eyes were the color of the flames in the heart of a forge and Ned felt them scalding his soul. It was hard to see anything in the courtyard with the weir wood streaming the school’s gray and white even without being consumed by his wife's fiery eyes, so he stopped trying. Ned found the decorations more than a little sacrilegious anyway, though he was sure the old tree had been hung with much worse in its day._  
_All these hazy winding thoughts were blown from his mind when Cat licked her scarlet lips. “I’m glad you did. You look so handsome in your fancy uniform,” she purred, her soft southern accent seeming to stroke him everywhere as she ran her nails down his back. Ned prided himself on being able to spot his mate’s moods a mile away. It was what he attributed his long, happy marriage to. Ned had rarely seen these signals from his very proper wife outside the bedroom, and never in public. He was at once a little shocked as Ned knew himself to be quite sexually conservative, as well. Perversely, though, he was also possessed of a desire to see how far he could push her before she fell all to blushing._  
_In a bold and hitherto untried dance move, Ned spun Cat out admiring the grace that she rarely got to display on the dance floor with him. When he reeled her back into his embrace, he dipped her very deeply, trailing his nose along the modest neckline of her deep red dress. They both gasped as he scented her arousal and his manhood stiffened against her belly. Giving him the shock of his life, his wife of nearly 20 years, hooked her silk-stocking clad leg high enough over his hip to bare her black garter straps and ground herself against the bulge in his pants while her spiked heel jabbed at one of his ass cheeks. Everything up til now could be explained by being swept away by the rising tide of teenage hormones, but Cat would be mortified in the morning if anyone saw her behaving like this._ Had she been drinking? _Ned thought as he kissed her deeply (no she just tasted like punch) while dragging her across the dance floor in what he hoped looked like one of those fancy dance moves that always made Cat so swoony when she watched the Edd Peake Show. They were closest to the Southern exit from the courtyard, so Ned headed that direction as his prim wife attempted to suck his tongue out of his head._  
_The sound of the door closing them into a dim, deserted, and locker-lined corridor almost drown out the sound of tearing fabric. Ned half turned to investigate the noise, as Catelyn dropped to her knees in front of him, her nibble fingers at his fly. The sound of his own zipper coming down became the only sound in his world until the sound of his wife hungrily taking his ice hard member into her mouth eclipsed that. This was not something she did often lately as Jon was now old enough for her to be contemplating her next baby, so Ned just leaned against the door enjoying himself for a moment before that thought caught up with him._ Door. Old gods, Cat is sucking my dick in the school with people on the other side. _Ned tried really hard to dredge up the part of himself that would be appalled by that, especially since one of the people on the other side of the door was his precious only darling daughter. It was as if that part of him was deeply asleep, or had been beaten into unconsciousness by the part of him that would never tire of watching his wife’s crimson lips sliding up and down his shaft. She'd shocked him by doing so on their wedding night, leaving maroon smears then as now. Now as then, Ned slid his fingers into her intricately coiffed tresses and made a fist. Hairpins plinked onto the floor, and he used this new hold to guide her movements. She moaned around him and began to suck harder as her hand disappeared beneath her dress. If Cat had ever touched herself for pleasure, Ned had no knowledge of it. He was almost positive that he given her release on a few occasions that were some of his most treasured memories. Her own satisfaction just never seemed to matter that much to her, as it was his pleasure that gave her babies. “Oh gods Cat, let me see.” The corner of her lips turned up, sexier than anything Ned had ever seen, until she did as he bid._  
_Cat rucked her dress up to display her small clothes pushed aside, two fingers buried in her glistening auburn curls. Ned’s sac tightened at the sight of her. The sound of her lips breaking suction was deafening in the quiet hallway. “In me, Ned, please,” she begged._  
_He knew she wasn’t asking him to release inside her mouth. He used his hold in her hair to turn her around as he hit his knees behind her. “Keep touching yourself, my love,” he growled as pushed her onto all fours and rucked up her dress. The silk of her undergarments caught on the callouses of his hands as he yanked them down to her knees, bearing her sex to him. He could see the tips of her fingers rubbing circles into the top of her womanhood. His manhood pulsed as it wept with the need to be inside her. Still, he took the time to slide a finger into her folds. He may not have always given her pleasure, but he never took her before she was ready. Cat moaned. She was sopping wet, so Ned grasped her gorgeous round hips and thrust into her. She emitted a guttural cry, and he froze._  
_“Maiden, Mother and Crone, Ned don’t stop!” Her voice rang out as she slammed back onto him, letting out another groan. Ned had never heard his wife take the gods’ names in vain, and he felt his sac tighten again._  
_“Cat…” He couldn’t formulate words, but she seemed to understand._  
_Catelyn Stark craned her long elegant neck so she could look him in the eye with the wickedest smile he had ever seen. “Fuck me, Ned. Fuck me until I am screaming your name.”_  
_Ned tangled his fingers in her the molten river of her hair a proceeded to do just that. He slid in and out of her as she tightened around him, panting harder and harder until she was begging and pleading with him to never stop fucking her. She felt so good that he was biting the inside of his cheek and thinking gruesome thoughts to keep from spilling too soon as he drove deeper into the stream of her pleasure. After an ecstatic eternity Cat when totally stiff and then convulsed around him. An instant later, Ned’s howl of pleasure joined the echoes of his name bouncing off the metal-lined walls.  
_ _Cat sagged back against him as the aftershocks of her pleasure milked the last of his seed from him along with the last of his will to stay conscious. His last thought as he sank down on top of her was her comfort as he curled his arm around her torso to cradle her head in his hand so the hard linoleum would not be her pillow. He lost consciousness with his head pressed against her back, listening to the precious sound of her heartbeat._

__

November 7, 1983  
I am free. I know this because there are tree parts poking my feet. It hurts, but it feels better than the cold, smooth floors of the place where I was not free.  
It hurts in my stomach too. I think I am missing food. This is one of a hundred new sensations. I had once missed food in the smooth place. It was a punishment.  
I smell food. I follow that smell though my feet hurt.  
There is a building, and I am weary of it. I don’t want to be trapped again. I am afraid.  
I miss food more than I am afraid. There is a door. I rush up to it, fearing it will be locked like so many previous doors. It is not.  
The smell of food is so overwhelming that my stomach seems to lay flat against my spine as if it could use the bones to climb closer to the food. But I can’t actually see anything to eat. The room I am in is all metal. The reek of food tells me this might be where food comes from, but I’ve never been in such a room. Food always comes to me on a tray. I look desperately around, but missing food is like a veil over my eyes. I see no trays, and I want to cry in frustration and emptiness.  
As the tears start to form and my vision blurs, I see something that looks kind of like a tray and smells a lot like food. I hurry over. The yellowish strips don’t look like any food I’ve ever seen, but since leaving the smooth place, I have come to find that there is a lot I have not seen. I take an experimental bite. I’d rather get sick then continue to be empty for one moment longer. It’s so hot I burn my tongue. I keep eating through the pain. It is too salty, but I kind of like that.  
I am so busy gobbling food that I do not hear the man who grabs me by the shoulders. His bushy orange eyebrows make a V. I have studied a book of facial expressions so that I will know what people are thinking when I see their faces in the black place. His brows tell me, he is very angry. I must have been eating his food. His fingers dig into my arms like the orderlies'. I catch the word “St-ee-l” which I do not know. And “boi” which seems a little familiar. I am just about to do something to get free when he lets me go with a little shove. The eyebrows are now trying to meet with his wild orange hair, and I am interpreting that as shock. He is gigantic with a fluffy orange beard. Anything that could shock him would probably be dangerous to me as well. I crouch and look behind me. There is nothing there so I turn back to him.  
His face crumples in on itself in what I take to be pity. He takes a step back from me. He pushes the food closer to me. “Go ahead. Eat. Can’t serve it now, you’ve had your fingers all over it.” His face is smoothing out to a neutral expression, so I straighten up into a neutral posture. I am still very empty, so I do as he says.  
He drops some strips that are like the ones I am eating only lighter into a bubbling liquid. “Hot. Don’t touch.” He said very slowly, though his words are strangely shaped. Then he goes to an opening in the wall and yells. “Everybody out! Yes, I know you didn’t get your fries Edd. I put some on, but you’ll have to take them to go. Everybody out!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first Ned/Cat smut. I pulled back on the language at first trying to demonstrate Ned's conservative attitudes. Let me know what you all think. Are the flash backs confusing? Any guesses as to what is going on at Prom?  
> So I'm trying something different by using first person present tense. I'm hoping to show that El thinks differently. I intend to shift away from this as she spends more time out in the real world. Let me know what you think.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandor meets the party. Sansa and Jon hunt for their pack member

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a short one, but it will make it out before the weekend :)

Sandor tipped his hat and a wink at the school secretary and pulled the good side of his face into a smirk that chicks seemed to dig for no particular reason that he could fathom. Roz, he thought her name was, blushed as only a red head can, and stammered the names into the microphone, calling the boys to the office.

Principle Luwin offered up his office for the interview and Sandor ambled in with Lieutenant Dondarrion. “Why do you do that?” Beric asked Sandor as they arranged themselves good cop/bad cop style, Beric in a chair with a note pad, Sandor slouched against a desk with site lines through the open door.  
  
“My last thing ended kinda rough a while back, and I’m ready for the next one,” Sandor replied low and gravelly while eyeing Miss Next openly.  
  
“They all end rough,” Beric observed. “And it’ll keep on like that until you make some changes.”  
  
Sandor chuckled bitterly. “As if I were interested in changing.”  
  
It was then that the boys came through the door like an upended basket full of puppies all geeky limbs and too big hands tangled up in each other pushing and pulling through the door with nervous energy. Sandor studied them passively to give them time to settle. One was bigger than the others, but no less gangly, promising further growth to come. He had a familiar look to his stormy blue eyes, and Sandor figured he must have gone to school with one of the kid’s parents. One was rounder than the others with a mop of curly brown hair and no teeth. This oddity did not stop the kid from smiling, laughing and talking though. That was weird. The kid probably got picked on a lot, and Sandor took a moment to be grateful that one of the kids in the group hit his growth spurt early so they’d all survive. One of the kids had dark summer Islanders skin. There were not a lot of folks like that in the North. He’d probably dominate in sports in a few years.  
  
As Sandor was smuggly contemplating a future winning season, the boys settled down. He opened with some gruff questions about where’s and when’s to establish a timeline. The boys tumbled over themselves yapping about some geeky crap that Sandor recalled being into before his “accident.” He growled in irritated response because all the things from before piss him off. That was when he was happy and free. A dead time that he did his best to bury. The boys failed to pick up on his irritation until he barked, “One at a gods damned time.”  
  
All three boys jumped, and their response was painfully familiar. _Fuck. Now you’re Gregor scaring kids? Get your shit together, man._ “You,” he directed his voice a bit more gently at the middle boy whose name was...Sandor glanced at his notes...Wheeler, but who had the Baratheon blues of the former town Mayor who had been known for slinging his seed far and wide. That was why the kid looked familiar. _But Wheeler? What the fuck was Bronn’s last name doing hung around this kid’s neck?_ Sandor had not bothered to check in with ‘the team’ after returning from his tour and a stint as a city cop, relying on Beric and Old Nan to interface with the public for him. _Maybe it’s time that I pay some old friends a visit._ Now that he’d seen Sansa, how much worse could it get?  
  
“Kingsroad,” the kid said clearly and with more self-possession than most kids his age managed when being scowled at by scarred law enforcement. He looked Sandor right in the face without flinching as he spoke. “It’s a real road, but with a made-up name.” He went on to describe its location and finished with a firm offer to help. The other boys immediately echoed him in a way that made Sandor’s head feel fit to split.  
  
Sandor started out growling no’s, but they talked over him until he lost his shit. “No! After school, go straight home. I don’t need any more chirping mothers in my office tomorrow morning.” Just to be clear he listed off as many of their adolescent bullshit excuses and finished up with, “This is no Bran the Builder Tale where the Prince who was Promised is going to ride up on a horse named Glory and deliver your friend back to you," Sandor assured them citing a jumble of different events from the book they’d been arguing about earlier.  
  
“The horse’s name was Honor,” the toothless kid corrected him, and his friends all shooshed him as Sandor’s brow lowered.  
  
“Aye, there was a horse named Stranger too. Is that who you want coming for you? Some big son of a bitch who snatches up kids to sell ’em back to their families. Stay the fuck home today.” Sandor rose to his full height to intimidate them. “Do I make myself clear?”  
  
After a chorus of “yes sirs” that ground on his nerves, he and Beric took their leave.  
  
#

_1980 something_

_Sansa drifted up to the ruins of a once-great fortress her hair steaming behind her the same brilliant color as the leaves falling all around her. It was basically a pile of rubble, but there was one room left with four walls and flagstone floor. Her father had told she and her brothers stories about how when his Grandfather had rehung the door for his father. Sansa blessed her ancester for choosing stout weir wood as she tucked the videos under her arm before raising her hand to knock. This lair was once her adolescent hideout. Above the door she wrapped upon was a sign that had originally been lettered by her father, embellished by her aunt, carved by her brother, repainted with flowers by herself, repainted again by Jon._  
_She was challenged by the high thin voice that was the joy of her life. “Bealor the Blessed,” she gave this week’s password echoing up from the annals of history. Sansa could not be prouder of her smart boy._  
_“Enter,” Bran called._  
_She did so finding him curled up with A Dance with Dragons. “Are you sure your ready for that one?” she asked, remembering being much older when she’d read the Great Epics of Westeros. Even so, she was very unsettled by them._  
_“I don’t get scared anymore,” Bran assured her the lamplight glinting in his steely gray eyes. That same light warmed and caught the sparks in his auburn hair, darker than hers, more like mother and Robb’s. Sansa’s eyes swam for a moment at the thought of the uncle, and grandmother Bran would never meet._  
_“Not even of Mad Jesters or Hedge Witches?” Sansa asked, holding up new releases featuring last year’s Strangerween monsters so that they covered her face and gave her a moment to recover her composure._  
_“Awesome!” Bran exclaimed. “Which one should we watch first?”  
_ _“Whichever one you want, sweetie” she said, tickling him._

#

Bran’s howls of laughter echoed up through time to blend with Sansa and Jon’s calls as they spiraled out form Winterfell calling for their lost pack member. Bright sparks of leaves trailed down on them as if struck from the flint and steel of the lowering sky. The air was chilled, and Sansa wished she could recall what Bran had been wearing when he left the house. _Does he have a jacket? How the hell would I know? I’m always at work._ She was feeling despondent, and it gave her calls a keening quality that made them haunting while it carried the sound further in all directions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We start the chapter off with a bit of an alteration in Sandor's character, at least from my view point. This Sandor is going to be a bit of ladies man in the clumsy way that Jim Hopper is. He's a big fish in a small pond. And the uniform, chicks dig it. There are other reasons which will be divulged. Just know that this is one of the ways that this Sandor tends toward Jim.  
> One of the biggest reaches in the fic is Gendry to Mike. We don't meet Gendry in the books 'til he's like 16ish. Hard to believe, but maybe he had an awkward phase. Obviously here he's the same age as Hot Pie and Lommy. Are you interested in the inconsistency around his eyes and name? It's something that I can delve into, or gloss over depending on how you guys feel.  
> I am particularly proud of making certain pop culture references and historical references Westerosi. Rate my success with that. Do you like it or find it distracting?


	6. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We start in El's head. Introduce Lysa in a bit of an unexpected place, but I promise when it all comes together it'll makes sense. Sandor finds something that makes him feel the gravity of the situation. This triggers a flash back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's another short one. Been navigating a move and then I came home to find an inch of water all over my house. So much stuff to be sorted and tossed. Hopefully I'll have another chapter for you all on Friday.

The taste of meat is an explosion on my tongue. There is something different about this food that makes it brighter and heavier than the bland food from the smooth place.

The hairy man in front of me is aksing me questions that have no meaning for me, but I am too focused on the food to think of anything but getting more of into my mouth. A hand clamps around my wrist. “What is your name, girl?”

I make eye contact with him and consider popping a blood vessel in his brain if his grip becomes any tighter.

His icy eyes fall to my arm. The sharpness of his gaze makes me try to tuck my arm in reflexively, but my physical strength is nothing compared to his. His expression reads fear and disgust...horror? What can be so terrible about some marks on my arm? I was very young when they’d appeared on my skin after a very deep sleep. They hurt for a few days, but it’s nothing compared to the other things that have been done to me. Or things I have done. “What is that?” he demands. “What is 011?”

This question is as difficult as the others he’d asked. I bend down to take another bite, and the food is yanked out of my hand. My eyes flash up to meet his, and I am now even more seriously considering the blood vessels his brain. He is not phased at all as he puts the food plucked out of my hand behind his crossed forearms. “No answers, no food,” his gravelly voice is accented the same as many people I’ve searched for in the black. They call themselves Free Folk. Papa calls them Wildings.  
I take an angry breath in through my nose that only reminds me how good the food smells. Earlier, I watched him take the food out of a very cold box. It had not even smelled like food at first. The bushy man put it on a hot surface, and as it made a hissing sound, it started to smell so good I thought I might tear a chunk off. He admonished me not to, and when I reached out, he chased me into the room that was full of tables waving the meat turning tool at me whooping threats that I am fairly sure he would not carry out. I was not sure that I could do what he did to make the meat smell like food, and that is the only reason why I don’t kill him where he sits keeping me from the food. The question he asked tumbles through my head as I struggle to find an answer that will get me the food back “Me. I’m 011.”

His fluffy orange brows meet over eyes showing the whites. I interpret that as surprise and snatch the food out from behind his folded arms that glint with hair that looks like the inside of the wiring I yanked out of the security system last night. He does nothing to block me and does not even protest, but continues to stare as I continue to eat. I am chewing a third bite when he stands and crosses the room to a piece of plastic and begins speaking into it. I can’t hear him very well as there is a spinning device that blows air around the room, making a terrible squeaking noise. It is irritating but also obscuring potentially important information. I use my mind to yank out the wires that carry electricity to the device, just in time for him to put the plastic down. My head tilts in fascination. The wires are the same color as his arm hair too.  
#  
Lysa sat behind a desk set up on a platform that allowed her a commanding view over several rows of women wearing bulky headsets. The room was absolutely quiet, save for the scratching of pencils on steno pads. A perfectly manicured hand shot into the air and a flash of jealousy cramped Lysa’s stomach, as a finely dressed man glided across the room and practically crawled under the headset with that bottle red harlot.

Lysa swept her own magnificent auburn locks that over one shoulder in answer to a tug on her sleeve. Her son scrambled up into her lap and bushed aside her shirt and bra to fasten his sweet cupid’s bow mouth on her nipple. A wave of euphoria swept over Lysa as she felt her milk let down, but even that was not enough to wash the jealously from her system as she watched Petyr flash a grin at little Miss Manicure and bow over her supple white hand.

He straightened with his characteristic economic grace and hurried from the room with his security detail at his heels.  
#  
Sandor, Beric, and Thoros fanned out through the woods along ‘The King’s Road’ looking for any signs of Bran. Almost as if they were practiced at hunting through the woods, they took turns calling out the lost boy’s name. A scathing gray wind made the light change swiftly as it blew leaves from the trees and clouds across the sky like ghosts.

Sandor caught a glint of metal and crunched out of formation into the underbrush releasing the smell of damp leaves in his wake. He reached into a pile of flame-colored leaves and pulled up a silver bike. Just as Sansa had described it the license plate on the back read SUMMER. “Nymeria’s tits!” he cursed foully.

“Find something, chief?” Thoros asked.

“Only the kid’s most important companion and mode of transportation. No way he’d a left it here. Bike like this is a Destrier to a kid like Bran.” _What had Sansa gone without to afford it? Or was it a guilt gift from Joff?_

“…unless he was carried off,” Thoros suggested scratching the bald spot under his hat.

“Or something spooked him past the point of reason, and he ran,” Beric intoned.

A shiver ran down Sandor’s spine as he broke out in a cold sweat all over his body. _The kid is in real trouble._  
#  
There is no way he can run faster than the bike, _Sandor assured himself as he rode hell for rubber up the King’s Road praying to gods he didn’t believe in that he would make the Stark property line before Gregor caught up with him. Sandor was sure his wish had been granted just as he felt a vice clamp down on his shoulder and he was yanked bodily off his bike. There was a giddy moment of free fall before the paralyzing pain of his breath driven from his body eclipsed his being._  
_Eyes stuck open from the pain, the sight of Gregor leaning over him, his face a rictus of anger would be seared into Sandor’s psyche as nightmare fuel for the rest of his life. “Not so fast, shaggy dog,” his brother growled as Sandor’s scalp caught fire from his brother's iron fingers tangling in his hair. Gregor drugs him the 15 or so feet back to his Charger by his hair. At first, Sandor was too stunned by the pain to do anything, but his limp reflection in the cherry side panel catalyzed an escape attempt. Sandor pinched and dug at his brother’s fist in his hair. He flailed and bayed for help. At one point, his foot connected with the side view mirror. The satisfaction bestowed by the crunching glass was quickly wrenched away as his brother gave a vicious twist to his neck by twisting his hair. Sandor went limp after that as numbness swirled down his left side. He was sure his bother had torn something in his neck, and he’d never walk again._  
_Long moments later, Sandor took it as a good sign that he could feel every jar and thump as Gregor folded him into the trunk. Darkness closed in with the trunk lid and night fell in Sandor’s mind.  
_ _So began two days of torture that nothing could make Sandor’s mind willingly revisit. The light at the end of that at tunnel had been Robb wrestling Sansa away from kicking Gregor as her father was simultaneously cuffing the mountain of a young man and admonishing his daughter that Starks did not harm prisoners. “Maybe it’s time for me to get a different name then. If that bitch hadn’t poisoned Lady I would have her tear him,” she spat in Gregor’s face “limb from limb.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With regards to Lysa, there is no equivalent to her in Stranger Things in her capacity in this chapter which is being the eyes that show us "Papa" is listening to the phone calls of Wintertown.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is weird, but let me know what you think.


End file.
